Posts Tagged ‘La Nausée’

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all Sartre on you. I don’t think I have the energy for it to be honest, and I can’t really remember what that book is about anyway because it’s been 4 years since I pretended to read it for my undergrad. On Sunday night my stomach began to feel all weird and twisted, so I rode with it despite my late-night cigarette making me feel as if I were going to vomit right then and there. I went to sleep early and curled up in bed in the foetal position, only to wake an hour and a half later (though it felt like I’d been asleep for half the night already) stomach still pangy. Or in fact, more than that – it felt as if I were pregnant. I went to the bathroom, tried to induce vomit – and it didn’t take much. After being copiously sick, I felt much better and slept soundly until the morning. I dragged myself out of bed, off to uni and despite at times feeling like I was trudging through treacle (you know when it takes effort to walk, so you say to yourself “All I have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and keep doing it” – it was like that) I made some good progress on my new interview analysis essay. I also made a friend in the library caretaker, who enquired why I was lying across several of the seats in the UWE group study area – she asked what was wrong, and when I told her about my nauseous stomach, she proceeded to tell me about what triggers her IBS (TMI!?) and to call her if I needed to be sick (thanks, but I think I can manage vomiting by myself). So I made a new “friend” through my illness, which is slightly odd but sort of heartwarming. Last night I fell asleep for about 10 hours, and this morning I felt more or less back to normal, but come around 4pm my energy quickly depleted and now I’m sat here blogging, muscles aching in jogging bottoms and a hoodie (you know it’s serious if I can’t be bothered to make an effort with my appearance – especially considering my motto “if you feel good, then you should look great; if you don’t feel good, you might as well look great”). I apologise for the delay between this and my last blog, and I also thank all of you for making the past few days ridiculous highlights in my blogging career – my stats have exploded! Long may it last! And thankyou so much 🙂

Anyway, I don’t cope with real illness that well. I generally don’t admit that I am ill most of the time – I don’t get “man-flu” and I’m not one of those pansy-men who crumbles at the merest whiff of cold. I generally carry on as if nothing is the matter until I am physically forced to sit down and stop – I have quite a lot of stuff I want to accomplish most days, and I’m damned if any kind of bug is going to get in my way. But I also try and be healthy – despite not having much appetite, I force myself to eat because it’s the only way I’m going to get any nutrients, and thus any energy. I make an effort to sleep, when normally I can get away with burning the candle at both ends a bit. But I feel like I’ve been stopped in my tracks a bit – I’ve been relieved that my essay is going well, but I feel somewhat guilty that the last two days before Toby goes home for a week, I’ve not been particularly fun to be around and I haven’t been energetic enough to as much spend time with him as we would both like. Fingers crossed, by the time he returns to Bristol I’ll be all sparkly and new again. To be honest, since we started dating I’ve been uncharacteristically ill, having had multiple colds and now this kinda indigestion bug (I presume it must have been something I ate). So I apologise for that, but with the summer coming and my yearly hay fever diminishing, I hope for health and happiness. 🙂 Perhaps with everything in my life seeming to have aligned since last autumn, I’ve forgotten to look after my basic health a little bit (I’ve been underdressed at times, my gums were bleeding for a little while, I’ve had these multiple colds) being caught up in the rapture. I’ll try and remember to look after myself a little bit more. I made a joke about old age, but I really hope that this is not what getting old is like, because if so then I’m going to be grouchy 😉 I mean, when I was younger and my nan and I used to walk down Totterdown to the St. Philips market, I used to push her up the slope back home because “it was good exercise”. I didn’t understand quite how tired you could get, or why you couldn’t push through it. And walking up St. Michael’s Hill yesterday with Hannah, I can still push through it, but I can now envision in the future that I may not always have the physical strength to do that, even if my will is there. So I have a newfound appreciation and understanding of that. And if worst comes to the worst, I listen to something hard and upbeat like Rihanna or Nicki Minaj and that keeps me going, and gives me a placebo energy boost. I’ll be fine 😉 Take it easy xxx